


To Be Awake

by starlight_firelight



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Elias is the only character actually in this but the others are mentioned, M/M, One Shot, Other, idk man im shit at tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23951479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_firelight/pseuds/starlight_firelight
Summary: One.Two.Three.Four.Heartbeats. Rain. Eyes. Fading away--no, no. Stay awake. Always awake. Don’t close your eyes.(Elias has a bit of a bad morning)
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	To Be Awake

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like forty minutes instead of writing my final paper and I regret nothing

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Heartbeats. Rain. Eyes. Fading away--no, no. Stay awake. Always awake. Don’t close your eyes. 

He keeps his eyes wide open. Reaches up and pulls his eyelid up until his flesh shows, the end of his face blending into his eyeball, pink into white, all shine with wetting tears. His mirror is dirty. Or maybe that’s his glasses. The soap on his hands dried long ago. His eyes hurt with it. No matter. His ears are ringing, long and sharp and pungent and accompanied by a dull ache blooming from his temples and stretching through his head. 

His hair is getting gray. Has been for a while. There are wrinkles under his eyes, creases on his forehead, smile lines under his nose. He was never one for smiling. His eyes are too green. They stick out. The first thing people see when they look at him are his eyes. Staring into them, reading them, knowing them. He’s too pale. His lips match his skin. He has a mole, a little one, under his eye. His jumper has a wine stain on it, brilliant red cutting through white wool like wet blood. Did he always look this tired?

Today, he thinks--Today, I have things. Things to do. Does he? His eye hurts. Not the real one. Or, maybe, the only real one. Ones. numbers are an oddity. One, two, three, five, twenty. What would he be without them?

Who, what, where, why, how.

An addict with a philosophy degree. 

Not that he isn’t that now. But now, at least, he is more. Now he sees, really, properly. It hurts, sometimes. Not always. But today. Today it feels like knives, scraping the skin off of him with careful precision, poking their way into his skull, his gut. Needles goring out his eyes and turning him inside out.

Martin--oh, and Jon. They spend a lot of time together. Elias knows why, but he doubts they themselves do. That’s fine. It’s always like that. Martin trips on a sock left discarded on a gray-and-beige carpet. Elias laughs. Gastly carpet, really. He’s been meaning to have it removed. Funny thing is, he doesn’t have much control over apartment carpeting. He knows that Jon hates it. Hates to see it. Martin isn’t too fond of it either. Better for them both, really, to get it replaced. Jon looks tired. He always does, now. They all do. 

Melanie sits at a desk, reading something from her computer. Elias doesn’t care enough to acknowledge what it is. They all go about their lives. Sweet, innocent, unknowing. Who is he. Identity is a strange thing. He always starts to slip too heavily into the skins of the people he sits in. This skin, especially. Addict, philosophy major. Too similar to who he was before all this, really. Too close. This skin is getting old. Its back hurts. He likes it. Wants to keep it. Wants to forever be Elias Bouchard. 

He shakes his head. He’s dizzy, and the earth spins around him.

He steps out of his bathroom and into his bedroom--a sordid, modern affair. He was never one for modernism in design, but it was fitting, he thought, for the character. All white and silver and fresh. He didn’t have a hand for plants, but liked to pretend he did by putting up realistic replicas hewn from plastic. Colourful statues. 

He slams his foot into the leg of a chair, ignores the pain. Watches. 

Martin’s making breakfast. Basira is walking through Mayfair. 

He takes off his jumper, throws it in the laundry hamper. Opens his closet.

Martin burns the eggs. Elias laughs again. Pitiful, useless lump of a man. 

He buttons his shirt--white and normal, cuffs affixed with cufflinks formed into the shape of eyes. A bit of a joke, he had thought when he bought them. A hint. Pulls a pair of black trousers from their place in his closet.

A man gets hit in the subway. Elias has seen him before. He can’t be bothered to care.

He fastens the clasp on his trousers and pulls a belt through their loops. Buckles it. Takes a green tie from his tie rack. Drape, cross, loop, loop, pull, insert, tighten, tuck, fold. The green is too dull to match his eyes, but it tries. He runs a hand through his hair. When was the last time he showered? He reaches down to select a pair of socks and

Hm.

Peter Lukas.

What is he doing here? Go back, to where you were. He’s too close. In London. Elias can hear him, taste him, feel him from where he stands. 

His hands still halfway through the action of lifting a pair of socks into the air. He is frozen. 

He frowns. Peter doesn’t like it when he frowns. Funny, then, that he’s always frowning. He straightens up.

Peter would like him like this. Alone. Beholding. Affixed. Raw. He-

He misses him. It hurts ike a sting to his neck. It’s not supposed to hurt. He’s not supposed to want to run through London until he can find Peter, find him, hug him, eat him alive and screaming. Peter likes to be alone. He is, after all, The Lonely. 

Peter is pretty. Handsome, perhaps, is a better word. But Elias prefers pretty. He’s pale--not the same pale as Elias, not so sickly. He looks like he was born that pale, like he fits in his skin. He could blend in with the snow, if he laid down on it. His hair always smelled of salt. Ocean salt. His eyes did not stick out so much as Elias’s, but that made them no less beautiful. Blue irises, light blue but drawn through with green and gold and ultramarine. Elias had not known eyes could hold so much colour until he saw Peter’s. 

Elias is lonely. Peter would like that. 

He shakes his head. Stops Beholding. Enough of Peter. He takes his socks and pulls them up one by one, stumbling to balance on each foot while he does. He’s too old for all of this. He pulls a cardigan from its hanger and drapes it over his shoulders, just enough to ward away the winter cold from his bones. 

Mornings are horrible. He wants to go back to bed. No time for that, though. He walks to his kitchen, pulls a bowl down from the cupboard and fills it with cereal. Cornflakes, the nasty kind that melt into a sludge the moment milk touches them. He takes out a spoon and stands there, crunching on dry cereal and staring out of his window at London. 

His eyes hurt.


End file.
